Title says all.

Personally for me? Anytime but now. I hate our current society. I would like to live in the West, and the 40's-60's most. :sadvaultboy:

Edit: ok let's look at this as a "second life in this period" type thing. You get to live here, but if you had to pick something else what would it be?

Hm. This raises an interesting point.
As a woman, modern society suits me simply for the equality and comfortable clothing. Being a medieval peasant would probably suit me fine though, though I don't know if it was common practise to [censored] and beat peasant women, but if not, a simple life outdoors would be a bit of alright. I mean, back then (I assume) the air was cleaner, you generally knew what was in your food and your alcohol wasn't bright pink. Mass production didn't exist (in my world, this is a good thing), nuclear war didn't mean anything, and you didn't have to worry about meteors, emmissions, the sun getting too close, the world running out of oil, mass destruction of ecosystems etc etc etc I'm sure I don't need to go on.

In short, I'd rather have been alive a long, long time ago.

None... I like our time, despite it's problems. Of course, I say that because I'm both a space nut and a technology nut and this is as advanced as we've gotten so far. Unless, you know, those conspiracy theories about the ancient Egyptians being super-advanced are true.

But if I was forced to... probably during the time civilization started colonized the New World. I hope to live to see the beginnings of Mars being colonized someday and a new world that everyone can actually go too under the right circumstances must have been very exciting.

I don't think I'd quite like the life-expectancy for average people being so much shorter though...

You see, I'm in a bit of a bind. As much as I would like to see aspects of Renaissance Italy, a Medieval France, a developing Germany and Victorian Britain, I would have great diffculting holding down a job, conversing or even enjoying the aspects of bits of history that I want to see. Even going back 40 years, I will be in big trouble due to race. There is NO TIME in the past where I would rather live than this one. Sure, there are facets that I find rather interesting academically - like sailing a square rigged ship, digging for bog iron, touring the Empire and quashing native idealist beneath my jackboot of gunpowder and steel but to actually live there? With what I know now? Its almost an invitation to get thrown in jail, executed for treason, being snubbed for not having the right skin colour, speaking funny or the right sort of breeding. Sure, I'm an absolute goldmine for some very basic concepts which have yet to come about but to me, life without piped hot water and soft toilet paper is not a life worth living.

That's a good point, history sure would have svcked for a lot of people depending on their gender, race and social standing.

I request this change to the OP:

"What past time period would you like to live through if you were a white christian upper-class male at peak physical condition?"

:P

A past time period? Why would I want to live in those time periods? Romanticized views of the past svck and are highly inaccurate. I don't feel like dealing through humanity's past. I want Skyrim and my Elder Scrolls games. I want medicine that isn't crude enough to amputate a limb simply because you got shot. Who here knows how George Washington died? He was bled to death by a doctor because his blood was considered impure. Who knows what the average wages and benefits were for a factory worker 100 years ago? I'll start by saying it wasn't good. There was no worker compensation and workers were treated as easily replaceable factory parts. Would I live through any period of time that involved slavery being legal? Definitely not. Would I want to toil away with little leisure time and few, if any, of the pleasures and comforts I enjoy today? Of course not. Do I want globalization to be a fool's dream? Do I want to face rampant disease and famine? Do I want to live a short life? Do I want to witness rampant turmoil in the form of pillaging and killing? Do I want to be a peasant? While all of these things aren't true for all time periods, the lack of medical and technological advancements as well as the lack of globalization and quick communication are true. Do I want to live through any of that? No. If we're talking about living as one of my ancestors, they would have faced many, many invasions and lived as either poor farmers or sailers. 30 years ago would have been very lacking for me to live where my ancestors came from. My mom's own childhood is proof of that.

haha, sure, there was only the bubonic plague, the odd pillaging and razing of towns, crazy Vikings high on mushrooms,...great times back in the medieval ages.

although I must say times nowadays are pretty scary too...

you do realize that history occurred all over the world not just europe? :tongue: if you black why not visit the nubian kingdoms or the zulu warriors. if your asian their history goes back even further than northern europes. the cradle of western civilization was in the mediteranean which consisted of whites, arabs, persians, blacks, etc.

personally i would love to spend some time with the vikings and the ancient greeks (romans are just copy cats who stole their ideas from greece). first on my list would be a visit to the island of lesbos purely for academic purposes to see if history is accurate or not.

in the end though i would only survive for about a week or so because i would get internet withdrawal. and of course i dont want to miss mass effect 3 and the witcher 2 and there was another game coming out this year that im blanking on right now.........hmmm

The roaring twenties is where I would be at home. Then when the paradise goes away and that OTHER period of time shows up, I become a bank robber^ _^. After World War 2 kicks off I would porobably join the millitary if they would let me. And if the American Government refused, I would.. just find a way to sneak into Ally controlled Europe and join anyways...

It'd be pretty cool to be a teenager in the US or England in the late 60s...

I'm thankful to live in this time. I would have likely been dead by now in any other time. The life expectancy has increased tremendously. People died of stuff in other times that they didn't even know what it was. There have always been problems, and today has it's problems, but I had a molar pulled a couple weeks ago, and I could not imagine getting that done even in the 1800's. Chances are, you lived a rural life and the only thing you had for killing pain while getting a tooth pulled was getting a STONE DRUNK on. Yes they had morphine, but chances are, you would not have easy access to anything like that. Any kind of disease that included a slow painful death must have been horrendous.
Society is kinda crazy, but then again, it has always had a downside, whether King or peasant.
I'm thankful to be living now....and besides, I didn't have very much choice in the matter.

Just noticed you mentioned 20's - 60's. I was a kid in the '60's and it was kinda cool to be a teen in the 70's but if you broke down on the road you had to find a telephone booth, or go up to somebody's house and ask to use their phone. The only dude that had a cell phone was Maxwell Smart....we could only dream of such a luxury.

I'm not some idiot who thinks back then it was all fun and games, I wasn't saying that those times were great. Obviously life back then could also be nasty, especially without proper sanitation, drainage, all those sorts of things. I would just much rather deal with the chance of some crazy Viking, should I have chosen to be born in Europe, than face things such as nuclear warfare, etc etc. Today's society is bad for paranoids. You get fed by the media all these potential dangers and possibilities, back then, you didn't know a plague was going to hit. ou didn't know if vikings would come pilliage your town. Sure, today you get to prepare for it and run, but then, what if it didn't happen? You spend your life paranoid.

The 1980s Just because I love the music from that time.

You make some pretty good points, however imagine the lifelong hell someone who suffered from schitzophrenia (sp) or other mental illness experienced with no medication available whatsoever.

If your referring to living in the middle ages still, then there are many more daily things that you would probably not want. They literally threw their waste out the windows at some point during that time period. The food was tasteless compared to today's food. And the lords of the land did indeed treat their peasants like garbage. If you think about it, we live like kings compared to even the kings of the middle ages. Air conditioning, microwaves and food anytime you want, good music etc.

EDIT: How could i forget the physical pain you are NOT submitted to due to immunizations and modern medicine.

This is a good point. Especially given how they used to deal with it. As someone with no mental illness (that I know of O_o) I didn't think of that. However, was it less common then, than now? I'd imagine a lot of what's in today's society amplifies the potential to develop mental illness. I mean, obviously it was around back then, but was it as common I wonder...

I'm sure people with diseases like that were thought to have had a demon in them or something else thats totally irrational and were chained up or burned or something. I've got no proof for any of that other than that seems to be the way they dealt with things back then...

I wonder that also. The reason that immediately came to mind was that my wife works with people who are Schizophrenic (There, I googled for the spelling) and we get kinda close to them. I think it was perhaps a pretty close per capita ratio but I don't have the stats. You hear of many cases long ago when families hid their mentally ill children in cellars and such....and the horrors of the insane asylums and the insane in literature.

Any time in the Iron Age (including Viking Age, although an era this stressful almost certainly wouldn't have been pretty), but no later than 1040-1050ish, or I should've been able to talk sense into (or assassinate) Olav Tryggvason in 994... Wait, I just got an idea for Assassin's Creed IV...

I want to be born in the 70's, and I'm not kidding.

Definitely something pre-industrial revolution. Something pre-christianity would be interesting too. Maybe even prehistoric...

I think at some point, may have even been the early 1900's, people who suffered migraines had holes drilled in their skull. I may have got that time frame totally wrong, it sounds too brutal even for then, but yeah, nasty things definitely happened to people with even perfectly normal illnesses.

None. Society was pretty crap if you were the wrong type of person, and being female I definitely would be "wrong" (or wronged) in some way lol.

@Aquan: I'm reading a history of Bedlam: London and it's mad, and it's really brutal. You could be put in there for anything really; dementia, schizophrenia, depression, epilepsy, excessive drunkenness (if you were poor), promiscuity (if you were a woman), or sometimes because you just seemed a bit weird :teehee: and didn't have enough influence with the right people to keep yourself out of the institution.

Renaissance for sure.

1940's post war new York, that would have cool to live during those times

Just like how it was portrayed in the King Kong remake